Clock ticks for 24-hour stores

Cornering the market . . . customers at this City Convenience store need only look out the window to find an identical business diagonally opposite. Photo: Jane Dyson

Overly bright, poorly designed and far too common: that's the city council's take on the burgeoning number of convenience stores appearing across central Sydney.

In a move that echoes its recent crackdown on the growth of sex industry businesses in Kings Cross, the council wants to introduce "anti-clustering" provisions for convenience stores in the city.

Under its draft Convenience Store Development Control Plan, new businesses would not be allowed within 75 metres of existing ones.

Stores would no longer be able to operate for 24 hours and their design must be sympathetic to the building in which they are housed.

New opening hours of between 6am and 11pm are proposed, although stores would be allowed to apply for a one-year trial of opening to 3am.

The intensity of the lighting and the amount of window advertising would also be tightly regulated.

The plan will be considered by the council's planning, development and transport committee tonight. The draft changes will form an interim policy while the document is put out for public comment.

"The unrestricted proliferation of convenience stores in the City of Sydney has generated streetscape, amenity and clustering impacts that require specific planning responses," according to the plan.

It says the new opening hours are aimed at minimising "anti-social behaviour from late night patrons" while the 75-metre rule would address the "adverse impact" too many stores had on the look of the city streets.

The council has received about 130 applications relating to convenience stores in the past five years.

The proposal was described as "outrageous" by Peter Jowett, executive director of the Australasian Association of Convenience Stores, who accused the lord mayor, Lucy Turnbull, of "headline grabbing".

Mr Jowett said store numbers had been driven by the inner-city apartment boom and their survival reflected a strong demand for them.